I just finished reading a book about burnout, and it opened my eyes to a couple of things:
- Many of us are much closer to burnout than we’d care to admit
- An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
Today I want to consider burnout from a PKM perspective, and share what I’ve learned from getting way too close to it.
The Burnout Spectrum
According to researcher Christina Maslach, there are 3 components to burnout:
- Exhaustion
- Cynicism (or depersonalization)
- A sense of ineffectiveness or diminished accomplishment
True burnout happens when your exhaustion and your cynicism (or depersonalization) are high, and your sense of accomplishment (which I’ll call self-efficacy) is low.
Based on the research, about 40-45% of people are “engaged” at work.
- 15% are overextended (high exhaustion)
- 10% are cynical (high depersonalization)
- 20-25% are frustrated (low self-efficacy)
- 5-10% are truly burned out (high exhaustion AND high depersonalization)
So even if you feel like you aren’t truly burnt out, you can be trending that way and not recognize the warning signs.
Which is important, because if you continue to ignore them, eventually you’ll hit a wall.
The tricky thing with burnout is that you can push through it for a while. And even when you hit it hard, it doesn’t completely incapacitate you. For example, you can meet the criteria for burnout and still be able to crunch the numbers. The mathematical brain doesn't get rattled by burnout. It’s the creative side that struggles the most.
The PKM Connection
There’s an obvious PKM angle to this as well. If the creative part of your brain isn’t hitting on all cylinders, it’s much harder to make sense of things.
Think about what PKM actually requires of you. It’s not just capturing information - it’s the ability to look at two seemingly unrelated ideas and notice the thread between them. It’s sitting with a half-formed thought long enough for it to crystallize. It’s the curiosity to follow a rabbit trail and the discernment to know when it’s worth pursuing.
When you’re burned out, all of that shuts down. You can still go through the motions - highlight the passages, file the notes, tag everything properly. But the magical insights? The part where you actually think about what you’ve collected and make the connections that unlock new understanding? That requires a kind of cognitive surplus that burnout completely eliminates.
As an independent creator who writes about personal knowledge management, that’s a scary thought.
My Experience with Burnout
After I read the book, I ended up taking the Maslach Burnout Inventory.
My results were… not great 😞
I ended up being higher than 90th percentile in both exhaustion AND depersonalization, which basically means I’m burnt out.
Honestly, I could feel it. The results didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Coming up with content ideas has been a lot harder than normal, and I knew deep down that things were harder than they should be.
I did, however, have a high self-efficacy score, which is important when fighting against burnout. With this, you can keep burnout at bay (at least for a while).
And that’s what I did. The combination of self-efficacy and my creative systems has helped me keep going in my personal battle against burnout.
But still, I recognized that I need to make some changes.
Fortunately, as you read this, I’m on an airplane headed for vacation 😎
Unfortunately, you need more than just time off to battle burnout effectively.
So here’s what I’m doing:
First, I’m done working on the weekends. When things go sideways (like they did this last week), that’s usually when I write my newsletter. But I can’t keep doing that. It’s not sustainable. I need to put some boundaries around my work hours. So if I miss a newsletter in the near future, I apologize.
Second, I’m going to start having more fun. I found a group of dads who play basketball on Sunday nights, and I’m going to start playing again after our Sunday night services. I used to play basketball regularly, but it’s been several years, and I miss it. If nothing else, this will force me to not work on Sunday nights when I get home.
Lastly, I’m going to take my foot off the gas a little bit with my YouTube videos. I like publishing every week, but if I can’t get a video out the door every Thursday, it’s not the end of the world. Weekly-ish is good enough.
The Bottom Line: Protect the Goose That Lays the Golden Eggs
If you’re battling burnout (or trending that way), I encourage you to take action before it’s too late. Don’t try to continually push through. Make some systemic changes before you hit the wall.
There’s a fable about a farmer with a goose that laid a single golden egg every morning. When the goose dies, he loses both the goose and the ability to produce any future eggs.
Your ability to create is your golden goose. You need to protect it.
Here are some things you can do today to keep yourself from burning out:
- Create some margin in your life. My Focused co-host David Sparks has an analogy he uses to describe trying to do too much as running downhill as fast as you can. At any moment, you’re inches away from falling on your face. Margin creates not just breathing room, but the ability to roll with the punches.
- Don’t look to your job for your value or purpose. We tend to look to our work for dignity, character, and a sense of purpose. But in reality, we bring those things with us. As Dirty Jobs star Mike Rowe says, “don’t follow your passion, but always bring it with you.”
- Find a hobby. The approach changes when you do something just for fun. There’s no pressure to be great at it, and you’re not concerned about prolific output. You just do it because you enjoy it, and it helps keep you from building your identity on top of just your job.
If your PKM system has gone flat - if you’re doing all the right things but nothing seems to be clicking - consider that it might not be a PKM problem after all. It might be a burnout problem. And the fix isn’t a new plugin.
It’s you.
You have to fight for margin. You have to be willing to take your foot off the gas. You have to protect the golden goose.
